Clause 24 - Consideration of reports in public interest
Public Audit (Wales) Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Mr Don Touhig (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Wales), Department for Constitutional Affairs; Islwyn, Labour/Co-operative)
Amendment No. 29, by requiring all local government bodies to consider reports as soon as practicable, would relax the requirement on the larger bodies. There would be no specific deadline, either of one month or any longer period by which they would be required to consider reports. That would be a retrograde step. The one-month deadline for the larger bodies is also consistent with the tighter time scale introduced on an England and Wales basis by the Local Government Act 2003. It reduced the time scale for consideration from four months.
Furthermore, the safeguards provided by clauses 25 and 26 are dependent on the distinction between the larger bodies subject to the one-month deadline and the smaller bodies. If the amendment were agreed to and the distinction were removed, the safeguards in clauses 25 and 26 would cease to apply. Those clauses require the larger local government bodies to make specific decisions in response to a public interest report
within a definite time scale, and require minimum publicity for a meeting to consider the report and its subject matter.